


What Spring Does With The Cherry Trees

by Regionalpancake



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Character Study, Cris reads poetry and is so very soft, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Introspection, Poetry, Romance, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23721853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regionalpancake/pseuds/Regionalpancake
Summary: Rios reads his battered poetry book and considers his relationship with Agnes.
Relationships: Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios
Comments: 19
Kudos: 27





	What Spring Does With The Cherry Trees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



> For Thimblerig, who absolutely made my week by making a Podfic of my work [[PODFIC] Some Strange Cargo, by Regionalpancake by Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23663131)  
> I’m so flattered and humbled and they did such an amazing job!  
> I’m pretty sure they’re quite the Cris/Agnes fan so I’ve done my best.  
> Thanks again <3

Reading old earth poems used to quiet his over active mind. Now it seemed to do the opposite. Stanzas striding down the menagerie of his memories, rattling the cages with a stick.

The book was old, very old. Not quite a first edition, not many of those survived the Eugenics War, but one that was printed not too long after printing was the _other_ option.

He wondered how many people had held this book before him. It’s wrecked state pointed to a long list of previous owners, or perhaps a select few careless ones. Whose drip of coffee was it on “Drunk With Pines”? Who wrinkled the edges of “Here I Love You”? Was it reading in the rain or had they dropped it in the bath? Who was “Tasha” and why was her name scrawled with hearts on page 21?

He’d picked the hardback up in San Francisco, what felt like a lifetime ago, in a quiet book shop on a sunny day. There were window-boxes overflowing with flowers and the white, sweeping buildings of the Academy looked just like the poster he’d hung above his childhood bed.

He’d lent the book to Alonzo once. A drunken suggestion over cards that perhaps recording some of the more seductive ones for his husband might be a fun idea. Spice up the marriage while he was deployed off-world?

“You never know, Joseph might like it,” Rios had said, refilling their glasses, “do the one on page twenty and thank me later!”

He’d picked the book out of the sterile crates of Alonzo’s personal effects after his death. He hadn’t read it for years after that. The pages had still smelt faintly of his Captain’s quarters, of his old fashioned aftershave.

Rios’ heart ached for the loss. Only he could grow up without a father and still end up grieving for one.

The book smelt like cigar smoke now. 

It was better that way.

He turned the page.

_“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”_

_There it goes_ , he thought, those cages rattling, as his attention turned to Agnes’ sleeping form, warm, against his chest.

It wasn’t on purpose. None of it was.

Not this ‘mission’. Not them meeting. Not any of it. Despite Picard’s grandiose speeches about _the work they’d done_ , _the good they’d wrought_ , Rios knew they’d only just stumbled through.

By the thinnest of margins.

By the skin of their teeth.

Picard _died_ for god’s sake, thought Rios, and he’s still up for making speeches from the bridge. Still here and only because of her. This unassuming woman; bringing someone back from death. Now _there’s_ a party trick. Some god-like power. Or genius. Or folly. Or maybe all of it. But either way she’s in his arms, her breath soft - for now.

He’s pretty sure that gods don’t have the same nightmares this one does.

Or couldn’t bear them for as long.

_“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,”_

It hadn’t been easy. It still wasn’t.

Both of them so broken. So unaware of where the other’s sense of self was fraying, that they snagged at the edges of each other sometimes.

They fought a lot at first.

_“A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.”_

God, he wants to hold her. Like this, but always. Limbs tangled, comfortable. All slow breathing and faint murmurs from her dreaming lips. Her body drawn close to him as if he could save her- and not the other way around.

God, he wants to hold her. And in ways distinctly _not_ like this. Like other nights. When it’s easy to forget who each of them pretends to be outside these walls. All that building need and hunger leaving little room for doubt. For introspection. Maybe it wouldn’t last. But then, neither does the sunrise and both felt _good_ against his skin.

“ _I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”_

It’s that last line that gets him. People always get it wrong and who knows, maybe it _does_ lose something in translation. But it’s not what spring does _to_ the cherry trees, it’s _with them_.

It’s a collaboration. A dance. A joining of hearts and minds and well, he’d think about the rest another time.

He looked down at the curled up body of the tiny cyberneticist beside him.

“I want to do with with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” He mumbled along, words softly settling as he kissed Agnes’ head.

He put aside the book of poems.

He had something much more precious to hold against him.

**Author's Note:**

> I wracked my brain trying to figure out if I got the line _”He’s pretty sure that gods don’t have the same nightmares this one does.”_ from somewhere else but I can’t find it!
> 
> Rios is reading _Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair_ (1924) by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in particular, Poem 14 or Every Day You Play.
> 
> Page 21 is the poem Girl Lithe and Tawny, which features the lines _“Girl lithe and tawny, nothing draws me towards you. Everything bears me farther away, as though you were noon….My sombre heart searches for you, nevertheless,”_ Because why not have bonus Tasha Yar feelings since we’re out here already?
> 
> “the one on page twenty” that Rios wanted Alonzo to recite to his husband is Poem 18 or Here I Love you, which has the line _“Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.”_ I’m sorry.
> 
> Read through Pablo Neruda’s work and channel your inner damaged-but-deeply-romantic-unlicensed-freighter-captain here:  
> https://epdf.pub/twenty-love-poems-and-a-song-of-despair.html

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] What Spring Does With The Cherry Trees, by Regionalpancake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23868229) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)




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